Keeping Busy

Geez it's been awhile since I've posted anything!  It seems like a whole lot of stuff has been happening and yet at the same time nothing.  Lets see...
* Winter has sort of started.  There's not a lot of snow but the temps have been cold, once you add in the "feels like" that is.  If it was just the actual temperature it would be pretty nice out for this time of year!  Most days are between -5C and -12C, but that doubles (or more) with that darn feels like.  We didn't even hit the negative temps until November 8th!
* I can't believe it but the horses are still on pasture!  That will change soon though I'm sure.  Either I'll finally have to say there's not enough grass left or we'll get enough snow to cover it.  It sure is a relief though that so far I'm only feeding hay to the cows and the three little guys.  Hay has been a hard thing to find around here this year :(
* My bestie 'Nell and I have been taking riding lessons!  We found a great deal on group lessons - $100 for 5 weeks for an hour lesson.  The "hour" lesson usually ended up being 2 hours, there were only 5 of us in the group, its super close to my place and I love the instructor (even though I had a bit of trouble understanding her communication style at first) but the BEST part?  We can bring whatever we want to for horses, from broke and finished to greenies AND it didn't have to be the same horse every time!  So Lefta and Voodoo went to a couple lessons and then I used ODIN for the last two... yep I'm finally riding my little boy! (err, not so little... he's probably going to finish right around 16hh)
* At the second lesson that Odin went to I loped on him for the first time!  It was my 5th ride on him (maybe 6th?)  He has had miles put on him and loped under saddle but still, it was MY first time :)
* 'Nell and I are going to keep going with lessons, just the two of us, every other week.  We'll cancel a lesson if it's too cold but we're hoping this will help us keep on riding through the winter.
* Team penning has started again!  Penning started late this year, November 1st, because it was a bit tough to find cattle (at least I think that's the reason they gave)  I missed the first one but made it to the next two.
* We lost Hera :(  A neighbour found her out in the bush at his place.  He said there wasn't a mark on her so she wasn't hit by a car or attacked, but he is pretty sure she was poisoned. Well not SHE was poisoned, but she got into some poison.  From the sounds of it there are some people trying to poison the coyotes so she must have got some bait.
* Riding... I've been trying to keep riding.  'Nell and I plan to suck it up and ride this winter, more than just the lessons, but when it's the wind making it that cold it seems pretty tough.  I want to keep Lefta, Voodoo and Odin all going throughout the winter and hit a clinic in the spring with Lefta & Odin.

I'm sure there's more but it's just not coming to mind, or it's stuff that's not really horse blog material (quite a bit of that in my personal life lately, making my head swim... blech drama!)  Well hopefully I'll be back to posting more regularly now!